System and Method for Communication Between Portal Applications and Portlet Containers

1. A computer-accessible, non-transitory, storage medium encoded with computer-readable instructions configured to cause one or more computers to: expose an interface to facilitate communication between a portal application and a portlet container during runtime of the portal application, wherein the portlet container includes the interface and is separate and independent from the portal application, wherein the interface exposes one or more application programming interfaces (APIs) providing at least one method to permit the portal application to invoke a particular portlet to run within the portlet container, wherein the interface exposes one or more service provider interfaces (SPIs) providing at least one service to permit the portlet container to obtain information about the particular portlet, and wherein the interface exposes a web container extension (WCE) API provided by a servlet container permitting the interface to manage a set of web containers associated with a particular web application; implement the interface during portal application runtime to allow the portal application to execute the particular portlet; provide a coordination service as part of a communication layer between the portal application and the portlet container, wherein the coordination service coordinates distributed portlet events and public render parameters to entities within the portal application and communication between multiple portlets associated with the portlet container; generate a first action object and a second action object in response to a received request from the portal application, wherein the received request is to process an action request received by the portal application and the generated first action object and the generated second action object are generated based upon action parameters associated with the received request; invoke, using the first action object and to run within the portlet container, at least one portlet associated with the action request, wherein the at least one portlet sets at least one render parameter in the second action object; communicate a portal event between the invoked at least one portlet and another portlet associated with the portal application, wherein the portal event is relayed by the second action object to the coordination service; and retrieve the at least one render parameter from the second action object to be used in subsequent event and render calls.

2. The medium of claim 1 , wherein invoking the at least one portlet comprises invoking a particular phase of the at least one portlet's lifecycle.

3. The medium of claim 2 , wherein the phases of the at least one portlet's lifecycle comprise a process action phase, a process event phase, a server resource phase, and a render phase.

4. The medium of claim 1 , wherein the provided at least one interface method permits the portal application to perform administrative functions associated with the particular portlet at runtime.

5. The medium of claim 4 , the administrative functions associated with the particular portlet comprising retrieving the particular portlet's configuration information included in a deployment descriptor associated with the particular portlet.

6. The medium of claim 1 , wherein allowing the portlet container to obtain information about the particular portlet comprises supplying information to the portlet container regarding the portal environment in which the particular portlet is to be invoked.

7. The medium of claim 1 , wherein the provided at least one service comprises at least a subset of: a uniform resource locator (URL) provider service for generating a portal application-specific URL for the particular portlet; a caching service for communicating the particular portlet's caching management details to the portal application; a portlet preferences service for reading and storing the particular portlet's preferences; and a portlet node for providing additional information for the particular portlet related to the portal application's runtime environment.

8. The medium of claim 1 , wherein the portlet container is compatible with portlets created using both Java Portlet Specification version 1.0 (JSR 168) and Java Portlet Specification version 2.0 (JSR 286).

9. A computerized method, comprising: exposing an interface to facilitate communication between a portal application and a portlet container during runtime of the portal application, wherein the portlet container includes the interface and is separate and independent from the portal application, wherein the interface exposes one or more application programming interfaces (APIs) providing at least one method to permit the portal application to invoke a particular portlet to run within the portlet container, wherein the interface exposes one or more service provider interfaces (SPIs) providing at least one service to permit the portlet container to obtain information about the particular portlet, and wherein the interface exposes a web container extension (WCE) API provided by a servlet container permitting the interface to manage a set of web containers associated with a particular web application; implementing the interface during portal application runtime to allow the portal application to execute the particular portlet; providing a coordination service as part of a communication layer between the portal application and the portlet container, wherein the coordination service coordinates distributed portlet events and public render parameters to entities within the portal application and communication between multiple portlets associated with the portlet container; generating a first action object and a second action object in response to a received request from the portal application, wherein the received request is to process an action request received by the portal application and the generated first action object and the generated second action object are generated based upon action parameters associated with the received request; invoking, using the first action object and to run within the portlet container, at least one portlet associated with the action request, wherein the at least one portlet sets at least one render parameter in the second action object; communicating a portal event between the invoked at least one portlet and another portlet associated with the portal application, wherein the portal event is relayed by the second action object to the coordination service; and retrieving the at least one render parameter from the second action object to be used in subsequent event and render calls.

10. The computerized method of claim 9 , wherein invoking the at least one portlet comprises invoking a particular phase of the at least one portlet's lifecycle.

11. The computerized method of claim 10 , wherein the phases of the at least one portlet's lifecycle comprise a process action phase, a process event phase, a server resource phase, and a render phase.

12. The computerized method of claim 9 , wherein the provided at least one interface method permits the portal application to perform administrative functions associated with the portlet at runtime via the portlet container.

13. The computerized method of claim 12 , the administrative functions associated with the particular portlet comprising retrieving the particular portlet's configuration information included in a deployment descriptor associated with the particular portlet.

14. The computerized method of claim 9 , wherein allowing the portlet container to obtain information about the particular portlet comprises supplying information to the portlet container regarding the portal environment in which the particular portlet is to be invoked.

15. The computerized method of claim 9 , wherein the provided at least one service comprises at least a subset of: a uniform resource locator (URL) provider service for generating a portal application-specific URL for the particular portlet; a caching service for communicating the particular portlet's caching management details to the portal application; a portlet preferences service for reading and storing the particular portlet's preferences; and a portlet node for providing additional information for the particular portlet related to the portal application's runtime environment.

16. The computerized method of claim 9 , wherein the portlet container is compatible with portlets defined using both Java Portlet Specification version 1.0 (JSR 168) and Java Portlet Specification version 2.0 (JSR 286).

17. The computerized method of claim 9 , wherein the retrieved at least one render parameter replaces previously set private render parameters.

18. The computerized method of claim 17 , wherein private render parameters are set by the portal application upon a render request as a result of a render uniform resource locator (URL) to the at least one portlet.

19. A computer-implemented system comprising: at least one computer configured to: expose an interface to facilitate communication between a portal application and a portlet container during runtime of the portal application, wherein the portlet container includes the interface and is separate and independent from the portal application, wherein the interface exposes one or more application programming interfaces (APIs) providing at least one method to permit the portal application to invoke a particular portlet to run within the portlet container, wherein the interface exposes one or more service provider interfaces (SPIs) providing at least one service to permit the portlet container to obtain information about the particular portlet, and wherein the interface exposes a web container extension (WCE) API provided by a servlet container permitting the interface to manage a set of web containers associated with a particular web application; implement the interface during portal application runtime to allow the portal application to execute the particular portlet; provide a coordination service as part of a communication layer between the portal application and the portlet container, wherein the coordination service coordinates distributed portlet events and public render parameters to entities within the portal application and communication between multiple portlets associated with the portlet container; generate a first action object and a second action object in response to a received request from the portal application, wherein the received request is to process an action request received by the portal application and the generated first action object and the generated second action object are generated based upon action parameters associated with the received request; invoke, using the first action object and to run within the portlet container, at least one portlet associated with the action request, wherein the at least one portlet sets at least one render parameter in the second action object; communicate a portal event between the invoked at least one portlet and another portlet associated with the portal application, wherein the portal event is relayed by the second action object to the coordination service; and retrieve the at least one render parameter from the second action object to be used in subsequent event and render calls.